Professor of Logic

Viagra

Robin Williams Robin Williams
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Robin Williams: Live on Broadway, 2002

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“God gave men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.”

Williams goes on a blistering riff about Viagra—not just the drug, but the entire cultural phenomenon of pharmaceutical companies discovering they could sell erections to aging men and the civilization-altering consequences.

He performs the drug's side effects list as a horror movie trailer, acts out the "call your doctor if your erection lasts more than four hours" warning with escalating panic, and imagines the board meeting where someone decided this was a good product to advertise during family television.

The physical comedy is legendary. Williams mimes the journey of a man taking Viagra for the first time with such specificity that the audience follows every beat without a word being spoken. His body becomes the punchline.

Underneath the physicality is a sharp observation about masculinity: men would rather take a pill with potentially fatal side effects than admit vulnerability. Williams finds both the comedy and the tragedy in that fact.